


Still Waters

by VolxdoSioda



Category: Final Fantasy XV, Subnautica (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Ocean Horror, survivor!Noctis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-20 22:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21288854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VolxdoSioda/pseuds/VolxdoSioda
Summary: Landing on an alien planet is terrifying, if survivable once you get the hang of it.It's a different ballgame when entire landmarks startvanishing.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 50





	Still Waters

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't ask about updates, as I'm no longer working on what this AU. I'm posting the snippet so I can get it out of my wip folder once and for all.

The Aurora is gone.   
  
The Aurora is  _ gone. _   
  
Noctis blinks in the bright light of morning, mouth a little agape. He swallows, turns around in the opposite direction to where he knows where the Aurora should be, counts to ten, and then turns back around.   
  
The ship does not reappear. 

There's nothing - not even a speck of floating debris. And it isn't like the waves could have taken it away, or it could have sunk - not when it's remained afloat for over ten days now, crash-landed on a pile of sand that was probably an island before the Aurora came along.    
  
"It certainly didn't grow legs and walk away," Noctis mutters, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. "Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck what the absolute batshit  _ hell." _ __   
  
_ Okay Caelum, reasonable logic time. A massive ship that was utterly crashed just days prior suddenly up and vanishes. What do you do?  _   
  
"Call it a day?" Noctis muses. "I mean I risked death for that thing multiple times. And now my problem is gone - no more radiation, no more damage to the world or it’s denizens. So I mean, a win's a win, right?"   
  
_ "After weeks without human contact, it is normal to experience psychological discomfort. Research indicates symptoms may be partly alleviated by adopting a pet, or anthropomorphizing an inanimate object." _ His PDA announces.   
  
"Oh shut up!" Noctis snaps, flinging his hands down. "I'm not crazy! I'm not experiencing physio-psychic--  _ argh!  _ I’m not crazy! And that--" he jabs a finger towards the large empty sandbar where the Aurora once sat. "Is not normal! Ships don’t just up and magically vanish after a week of sitting there, leaking radiation and notifying me of ‘irreversible damage to the ecosystems around it’. They just  __ don’t !"

His PDA remains silent on the subject, but Noctis can’t help the feeling the electronic device is somehow judging him. If nothing else, whoever recorded the voice for the helper file probably is, somewhere out there in galaxies unknown. He sighs, and sits on top of the pod, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes again. His head is throbbing, his stomach is rumbling, and he knows in a few hours his mouth will be dry as a bone. He should get in his Seamoth, ignore the giant, missing deathtrap for a moment, and instead focus on gathering the day’s rations. 

Yes, actually, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable plan. Instead of thinking about what could possibly have spirited away a ship that took up a whole chunk of the horizon, he should do that instead.

“Food, water, possibly a nap,” Noctis says, sliding his breathing mask back up onto his face. “And then I deal with my sudden lack of a problem. Six, never thought I’d ever say  _ that.” _

The Stalkers are in somewhat of a good mood, given then don’t immediately attack him on sight. Then again, it could also be the fact that he’s finally found enough materials to upgrade his measly knife from something that merely cuts to something that  _ cooks  _ as well, and the hiss of constant burning heat boiling the water around the blade is enough to keep the people-sized predators from doing anything stupid, or which would possibly get them eaten.

“Doubt I’d be able to eat you anyway,” Noctis mutters to himself as he lashes out at a Peeper. The thing doesn’t even have time to scream before its dead, its body going still and dropping down to the ocean floor. Noctis retrieves it, sticks it into his bag. 

A noise behind him has him glancing back; a few Stalkers are doing as their namesake suggests, keeping a good distance while they eye the bag with the cooked fish at his side. He debates his actions for a brief moment, then sighs and digs into the bag, dislodging three of his morsels. “Don’t expect me to always share,” he calls back as he swims away. 

If the crunch of bones between sharpened teeth is any indication, the Stalkers will expect much more in the future. Still, if it keeps the pesky hunters off his back while he traverses through the kelp forests, well, he won’t be too upset.

An hour and a half later finds him back on his pod, sitting on the roof munching on cooked Peeper while he ponders the unexpected problem before him. On one hand, the Aurora was an eyesore leaking radiation into the surrounding area. Its sudden classification as MIA means good things - the radiation will stop after a short time and hopefully disperse, and the giant eyesore is no longer there to remind him of a responsibility to people who are no longer alive.

On the other hand, that eyesore was acting as his compass until he could gather enough materials to build one. North and South at least he knew. Without the Aurora around anymore, he would need to budge the compass up on his list of things to get made, which meant more long hours of swimming around trying to find resources from the scattering of deposits across the land, cracking open chunks of limestone, sandstone and shale and hoping one would be what he needed.

And then there was the whole matter of the fact that the Aurora was a very  _ large  _ space vehicle. It was meant to carry over 150 people comfortably, including all the luxuries of a normal life. Cafes, gyms, bedrooms and then every bit of the materials needed to help get Planet 4546B started as  _ habitable.  _

The engines had been fucked; even if someone else had survived the crash landing, and hadn’t been able to send a transmission to Noctis, they wouldn’t have simply been able to hop aboard the Aurora and get it off planet. 

No, Noctis knew deep down there was only one option left for  _ what became of the Aurora.  _ But the idea of there being something that large - bigger than the damned  _ Reapers  _ \- terrified the shit out of him. Especially if that  _ something  _ was also  _ hostile. _

Passive? He could deal with. Passive unless attacked? Same. Give it a wide berth of space, a polite ‘good morning, good bye’ and sally on. Get in and out of its territory if he ever had to cross it. Keep his head (and vehicles) down. But attacking an immobile ship leaking radiation into the waters didn’t speak of passive to him. It spoke of  _ big, hostile, territorial.  _

But the only way to know was to go to the Crash Site, and look. And he wasn’t nearly as fast on the Seaglide as he was in the Seamoth. And at least in the Seamoth, he’d have a chance to escape if shit went tits up. 

“Am I really about to do this?” he asks the grouping of Skyrays flying around overhead. “Go towards where the fuck-all giant ship was, and see what big beastie made off with it? Am I really that stupid?”

The answer, he concludes, is an overwhelming yes. Because if nothing else, he needs to be aware of what to avoid. Needs to see and hear the thing, so he can turn tail and run at a moment’s notice.

At least that’s what he tells himself as he climbs back inside his Seamoth, and grimly points himself towards the sandbank where the Aurora once sat.    
  


0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Half an hour later, Noctis has not moved. He’s sitting on the edge of where the shallows meet a small kelp forest, the rim of where the crash zone begins. 

Once, when he was at the border of the Wall during an attack by Niflheim, Niflheim had dropped something - Nyx had called it  _ ‘a silence bomb’.  _ Made to erase all sound around them, to silence the world, to deafen the warriors on the field so Niflheim could sneak closer. Noctis had been hit by it when everyone else had, and it had felt like somehow, he’d been removed from the world entirely. He could see movement, see lips moving as people yelled orders nobody could hear, but there had been nothing. No sound, no vibrations, no  _ sensation. _

When the bomb’s effects had finally worn off three hours later, the world had suddenly gone from being too still and silent to being too loud and vibrant. He’d wound up wearing earplugs the rest of the day, and stayed in his room unless he’d absolutely needed to come out. From one extreme to the next, it had proven to be too much no matter what he did.

It had been one of the most terrifying moments of his life. It had only happened once.

Today marks the second time.

The Aurora isn’t merely  _ gone.  _ Everything is gone. The kelp forest that once teemed with life, a peaceful lie before entering the crash zone, is gone. There’s no kelp. There’s no color. There’s no  _ life. _

He went south, like he was going towards the end of the ship, where the Leviathans once were. There were shoals of fish for about ten minutes. And then he crossed an invisible line, and all movement, all sound, all  _ life  _ just suddenly  _ ceased. _

Were it only that, it might be bearable. His heart might not be beating so fast in his chest, and he might not be plagued by the overwhelming desire to freeze up, and also turn tail and run. But it isn’t just the silence. It’s the land.

As if a giant came along, and with the flat of their arm, swept the entire ecosystem aside. It’s miles upon miles of sand - and nothing but sand. The water is no longer murky, and perhaps once Noctis might have counted that as a blessing. Because it meant he could see the Reapers coming, could avoid them. Except whatever came through here has eaten the Reapers.

There are bodies. Laying still on the sand, suddenly no longer so frightening. Massive mandibles twisted or torn off entirely, whole chunks of flesh torn off, or half their body vanished. Ripped apart. Not even Biters are brave enough to come close and feast.

Which means logically, Noctis needs to leave. He should turn around, or back up, and leave this area alone. Whatever came through here took the Aurora, or perhaps destroyed it, and ate the Leviathans like they were nothing before sweeping the whole area flat as a pancake. This place is no longer for him. 

And yet, his foot presses gently on the gas. And yet he grips the directional control tight, and very slowly begins to push forward. It the utter silence, even the softest whisper of the engine is too loud. 

No biome on this planet has been  _ for him.  _ And yet he has explore. And so too it will be here. The crash zone - what remains of it - is not for him. But he goes forward, to see for himself.

Despite the silence, despite his circling, nothing lunges for his Seamoth from out of the sand. No giant suddenly appears to swat him down. He descends around the bodies of the Reapers, taking in the wounds, the way the flesh is torn - and he realizes that the chunks of flesh were not made from teeth, but look like they were dug out from the body. Like something pinched the Reapers between it’s fingers, and pulled the tastiest bits out.

He swallows, throat tight, nerves making him feel queasy. The lack of anything rattles him, even as he pushes on. He needs to know. 

And eventually, he finds something like an answer.

On the other side of where the Aurora was, there’s suddenly a drop. Sharp, but there, leading down into the blackness. With a trembling hand, Noctis flicks on his headlights, and very carefully puts the tip of the Seamoth right to the edge, tilting himself down to peer into the depths.

Blackness. Pure, blackness, with only a sharp wall of stone and sand leading down. He tilts the controls back, ascending the Seamoth enough to allow him to sweep the headlights side to side. His heart hammers, and he can’t stop the noise that escapes him when he realizes that it isn’t a sheer drop he’s looking at.

It’s a  _ tunnel. _

“Oh fuck me.” He grips the arms of the seat hard enough to leave indents in the plush material, pressing one hand to his mouth as he takes everything in. Something lives  _ below  _ the sand - below the stone. Something gigantic, something capable of making a  _ 1300 meter long ship  _ vanish before mowing down the ecosystem around it. “Oh fuck me, oh fuck me, fuck me  _ fuck me  _ why did I think this was a good idea? Damn it Noctis what the fuck did you--”

His voice dies in his throat in the next second. His eyes widen, his skin pales, and he wheezes out a single  _ “no!”  _ before putting the Seamoth in reverse and slamming on the gas. He’s gone in seconds, ducking under rock and reef and putting as much distance between himself and the tunnel as he can.

Behind him, from the depths of the tunnel comes an echo of vibration. A shifting of something scratching up against the rock.

In the tunnel, something is moving. Softly, slowly, but with purpose.

Awake, and perhaps, if Noctis is unlucky…

Still hungry.


End file.
